The rapid changes we’ve experienced in our home and work environments are causing a shift in the way we see the world.
If the work from home (WFH) phenomenon is here to stay, how will it impact plans for future housing?
If the office buildings don’t fill up again, it is possible that those sites will be redesigned to accommodate affordable housing. The old Fireman’s Fund Insurance complex in Novato, CA, vacant since 2015, is being eyed for a large mixed-use housing development. It will be interesting to see if the WFH movement impacts individual home design, or if the developers cling to concepts from 40 and 50 years ago. Our Post-pandemic Home Design post highlighted the way families are demanding changes to their current home footprint.
What is Dual-Use Design?
From crowded kitchen tables to the halls of academia, changing lifestyle demands are impacting our world view about many things, including architecture. Farshid Moussavi, Professor in Practice in the Department of Architecture, Harvard University Graduate School of Design, offers a course entitled Dual-Use. She explores rethinking residential architecture in the wake of Covid-19.
“Dual-Use,” Farshid Moussavi’s current studio at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, explores the politics of designing everyday spaces in architecture and the profound impact it has on people’s lives. In an era when residential developments’ cookie-cutter formwork follows private-sector financial systems and reinforces divisions along gender and class lines, Moussavi is interested in subverting that capitalistic demand.”
Sounds a bit revolutionary, but when you get right down to it, being forced to reconfigure domestic space into a place to do business as well, allowed us to imagine that another world might just be possible. Moussavi will be working with architectural students, encouraging them to be visionary. In Bucknell’s article, Moussavi said, “The pandemic has called into question the efficiency of all the old housing systems, and I think it’s up to us to produce the visions of tomorrow.”
If this is a topic you’ve been pondering, Bucknell’s piece on Moussavi and her Dual-Use concept, make for interesting reading.
Working from Home and the US Economy
According to a study published by the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, in May 2020, 42 percent of the workforce were working from home. In a more recent Gallup Poll, 72% of white-collar workers and 14% of blue-collar workers were working from home. These rates have been fairly stable since last fall, after declining from their peaks in April 2020.
If this trend holds, even at a somewhat decreased level, for many of us, our homes will continue to serve double and sometimes triple duty – working from home, schooling from home and simply spending family/leisure time at home.
Please contact our office today at 415-450-9504 x700 (Marin) or 707-241-4944 (Sonoma) to explore your own home’s creative possibilities for the new future.